A KINGPIN who smuggled scores of drugs through Liverpool John Lennon Airport was locked up for 10 years.

Brian Ferguson, 45, posed as a successful businessman running a salvage yard while living in a luxury eight bedroom mansion complete with its own “panic room”.

But behind the scenes he was part of a smuggling ring flooding the north of England with illegal drugs.

Newcastle crown court this week heard one of his vans was stopped by officers from the Serious Organised Crime Agency and found to contain 56kgs of high-grade amphetamine and 141kgs of cannabis, worth more than £2.5m on the streets. The drugs were hidden in long white boxes used to transport flowers and had been flown from Amsterdam to Liverpool, where they passed through security.

A search of Ferguson’s Sunderland home turned up £8,000 in cash, a quantity of the cutting agent Lignocaine, cocaine and ecstasy.